Methods for randomly accessing a wireless communications network by user equipment (UE) may be divided into two types: non-contention based access random and contention based random access.
In a contention based random access process, a base station sends a random access response message to the UE, and before the UE sends an uplink message to the base station according to the random access response message, the base station further needs to send scheduling signaling of the random access response message to the UE through a PDCCH (Physical Downlink Control Channel, physical downlink control channel) channel. The scheduling signaling of the random access response message includes information such as a physical resource, a modulation and coding scheme, a redundancy version, and an HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request, hybrid automatic repeat request) process ID that are used when the UE receives the random access response message.
Moreover, in a coverage enhancement scenario, multiple channels used in communication between the UE and the base station need to be enhanced, including the PDCCH channel. In addition, a typical enhancement method is retransmitting content on the channel.
Therefore, in the foregoing random access process, the scheduling signaling of the random access response message is retransmitted on the PDCCH channel, which causes a channel resource waste and an access delay.